I think the percentage of “casual” users who participate on this site because they enjoy intelligent conversations on rationality-related topics while having no FAI agenda is non-negligible. I suspect that reinforcing the idea of equality between LW and FAI activism will make many of them leave. It may be a net negative even if LW’s mission is FAI activism as there are positive externalities of greater diversity of both discussion topics and participant opinions (less boredom, more new ideas, better critical scrutiny of ideas, less danger of community evaporative cooling, greater ability to attract new readers...)
Also, I don’t like the idea of LW’s mission being FAI activism. There is still written in the header: “A community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality”, and I’d appreciate if I could continue believing that description. Of course I realise that the owners of the site are FAI enthusiasts, but that’s not true about the community as a whole. LW is a great rationality blog even without all its FAI/philanthropy stuff, not only for the texts already written, but also for the productive debating standards used here and a lot of intelligent people around. I would regret if I had to leave, which I would if LW turned to a solely FAI activist webpage.
I think the percentage of “casual” users who participate on this site because they enjoy intelligent conversations on rationality-related topics while having no FAI agenda is non-negligible.
I think they’re a majority, and that’s the problem. There’s a social norm that tolerates doing nothing about the most important problem humanity has ever faced.
It may be a net negative even if LW’s mission is FAI activism as there are positive externalities of greater diversity of both discussion topics and participant opinions (less boredom, more new ideas, better critical scrutiny of ideas, less danger of community evaporative cooling, greater ability to attract new readers...)
Charging a fee to comment is not the same as banning non-FAI topics. I agree that discussion of other topics can provide instrumental value to the SIAI.
Who is “we”?
I think the percentage of “casual” users who participate on this site because they enjoy intelligent conversations on rationality-related topics while having no FAI agenda is non-negligible. I suspect that reinforcing the idea of equality between LW and FAI activism will make many of them leave. It may be a net negative even if LW’s mission is FAI activism as there are positive externalities of greater diversity of both discussion topics and participant opinions (less boredom, more new ideas, better critical scrutiny of ideas, less danger of community evaporative cooling, greater ability to attract new readers...)
Also, I don’t like the idea of LW’s mission being FAI activism. There is still written in the header: “A community blog devoted to refining the art of human rationality”, and I’d appreciate if I could continue believing that description. Of course I realise that the owners of the site are FAI enthusiasts, but that’s not true about the community as a whole. LW is a great rationality blog even without all its FAI/philanthropy stuff, not only for the texts already written, but also for the productive debating standards used here and a lot of intelligent people around. I would regret if I had to leave, which I would if LW turned to a solely FAI activist webpage.
I think they’re a majority, and that’s the problem. There’s a social norm that tolerates doing nothing about the most important problem humanity has ever faced.
Charging a fee to comment is not the same as banning non-FAI topics. I agree that discussion of other topics can provide instrumental value to the SIAI.